Chapter 8: Active Audiences and the Construction of Meaning

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Chapter 8 Active Audiences and the Construction
of Meaning

• While it is true that the media influence what we
  think, it is not true that the media determine
  what we think.
• Audiences are active interpreters.
• Mass society theorists tend to argue that the
  emergence of a mass society and the forces of
  massification have led to mass indoctrination
  into dominant ideologies and myths.
• These dominant ideologies serve the interests of
  elites.
• This view downplays audiences ability to think
  for themselves.

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Active Audiences

• The idea of audiences as active interpreters
  rather than passive receivers emerged out of
  several forces
• 1. Recent research.
• 2. Rising populism (power to the people!)
  associated with the 1960s.

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Three basic ways in which audiences are active

• 1. Through individual interpretation of media
  products.
• Individuals have their own filters and
  perceptions linked to their unique lives.
• 2. Through collective interpretation of media
  products.
• Membership in social categories influences how we
  collectively see issues as Jews, Christians,
  African Americans, etc.
• Interpretations are socially constructed.
• 3. Through collective political action.
• Audiences make demands upon and give feedback to
  media producers.

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Meanings Agency and Structure

• The notion of an active audience points to a
  central insight
• Media texts do not have a singular meaning. They
  have multiple meanings, depending on who produces
  them and who interprets them.
• Everyone uses filters to interpret meanings, so
  the same program or song may mean different
  things to different people and audiences.
• Polysemy having multiple meanings or
  interpretations.
• Media are polysemic.

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Polysemy

• The same TV show may be interpreted differently
  depending on who is watching and what they are
  looking for.
• The TV show Married with Children can be
  interpreted as sexist for its portrayal of Kelly
  Bundy, the dumb blond, or as feminist for its
  portrayal of Peggy Bundy, the mother who refuses
  to engage in the traditional gender role as the
  subservient housewife.
• Both interpretations are possible due to the
  abundance of possible meanings that are
  available.

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Where do meanings come from? They come from a mix
of agency and structure.

• 1. Dominant ideology, core values, stereotypes,
  language, and cultural myths provide mainstream
  ways to interpret. We all learn and understand
  these mainstream interpretations, which are
  reinforced by the mainstream media. This is an
  aspect of social structure.
• 2. Personal experience. (An aspect of agency).
• 3. Subcultural and social category memberships,
  such as learned in family and among friends, peer
  groups, subcultures, etc. This is an aspect of
  both social structure and agency, because these
  meanings are negotiated.
• 4. Authority and structural institutions like
  school, church, government, media, etc.

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The Commercial Media Prefers Openness of
Interpretation

• Media texts, therefore, have at least some
  openness in their structure in which different
  meanings are always possible.
• This openness of interpretation is a desirable
  characteristic in the commercial media because it
  allows a wider array of possible audiences.
• Hence, greater profit potential.
• This is one of the reasons why most commercial
  media shun ideologues. They prefer the happy
  mindless chatter found on morning TV talk shows.
  It is more open.

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Social Structure Constrains Meanings

• Given the notion of (1) active audiences, and (2)
  polysemy, does this mean that audiences are free
  agents who can derive any meaning they want, or
  that the meaning of texts is limited only by the
  number of people reading the text?
• John Fiske tends to push the envelope here, but
  even he concedes that there are structural limits
  to how people are likely to interpret a media
  text.
• Social structure limits the ways we are likely to
  interpret a media text.

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Social Structure Matters

• The social landscape of daily life influences how
  we interpret media messages.
• Our personal filters are shaped by our social
  identities. These social identities include age,
  race, sex, social class and other social
  characteristics.
• People tend to interpret media messages in ways
  that are consistent with their social locations
  in society.
• Conservative Christians, for example, tend to use
  a particular set of filters to read media
  messages, just as rocknrollers use their
  strikingly different filters. (This explains why
  Christian rock music can be confusing to read).

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Ones Social Location Matters

• Social location refers to age, race, sex, social
  class, and other matters of social status. It
  matters because it helps shape our personal
  interpretive filters.
• The task, then, is to be aware of the ways in
  which meanings are socially constructed by
  socially located audiences under specific
  social-historical circumstances.

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Dominant Ideology meanings are easy to grasp.

• Some meanings are easier to grasp than others.
• The easier ones draw upon widely shared values,
  stereotypes, and dominant ideologies aspects of
  society we are all exposed to.
• Other meanings are harder to grasp because they
  are not mainstream interpretations or they do NOT
  draw upon dominant myths and ideologies.
• Note This helps explain why advertising is a
  fundamentally conservative phenomenon. Ads must
  draw upon wider meanings (like stereotypes) to be
  successful in reaching mass audiences.

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Types of Readings Preferred Readings vs.
Alternative Readings

• In most cases, there will be be one particular
  interpretation that will be the dominant
  interpretation of a media text.
• This interpretation is the mainstream reading of
  the text, otherwise known as the preferred
  reading, or the dominant-culture reading.
• If the interpretation is not a preferred reading,
  then it is an alternative, or oppositional,
  reading.
• Alternative readings are less common, but are
  more likely to be made by alternative or
  oppositional groups.

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Types of Readings

• 1. Preferred Reading the mainstream or dominant
  culture reading.
• Easy to decode due to their mainstream nature. We
  are all familiar with mass culture and its
  stereotypes. We all get the point.
• Emphasized by mass culture theorists (like Hal
  Himmelstein) as a key source of mass
  consciousness.
• 2. Alternative Reading, or Oppositional reading.
• Rarely considered by mainstream audiences.
• To use an alternative reading means that one is
  actively rejecting the preferred reading.
• Emphasized by John Fiske.

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Decoding Media and Social Location

• Hal Himmelstein argues that the corporate media
  promote the dominant ideology of capitalism so
  thoroughly that capitalism acquires a
  taken-for-grantedness.
• Opposing economic ideologies are no longer even
  considered. When no other ideologies are
  considered, what does this suggest about whether
  audiences are active or passive?
• There has been some research into how active or
  passive audiences tend to be.

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Social Status Matters

• This research suggests that one of the principle
  keys to how we interpret messages involves our
  social identities.
• Ones social locations (ie white, conservative
  Christian, male, older) function as mediators of
  the interpretive process. They do not determine
  how we think, but they shape our thoughts.
• We use our own social statuses to help decode
  media messages.
• Media messages can be seen as codes that
  emanate from certain social locations.
• Understanding these codes requires knowledge of
  the assumptions and meanings used by the people
  in that particular subculture.

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Mainstream culture is easy to decode

• Since we are all familiar with mass culture
  themes, our ability to interpret mass media
  messages is extensive. Decoding is easy here.
• Decoding MTV does not take a PhD.
• Mainstream media messages draw upon cultural
  codes that do not need to be articulated they
  are already taken for granted. We learn to see
  blond hair and blue eyes as pretty without
  questioning their underlying assumptions.
• Again, decoding preferred readings is easy.

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Alternative readings tend to emanate from
subordinate social locations

• While we can all decode the preferred readings,
  we do not all agree with the preferred readings.
• The question is, who tends to agree with the
  preferred readings and who doesnt?
• The research suggests that the social location of
  the audience (social class, race, sex, etc)
  influences who agrees and who disagrees with the
  preferred readings.
• This is a critical insight for John Fiske. Fiske
  argues that alternative readings tend to be made
  by people in subordinate social locations, and
  the research is supportive of his thesis.

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David Morleys study

• Croteau and Hoynes discuss David Morleys
  research involving British union workers versus
  managements readings of the same TV news
  program.
• Both watched the same program, but had different
  interpretations based on their social locations.
  Union workers were in a subordinate social
  location compared with managers.
• Managers tended to adopt the preferred readings
  because it fit with their common sense view of
  the world, while union workers saw the TV
  coverage as biased toward management. Union
  workers were more open to alternative readings.

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Social location matters

• In the case of social class, ones social class
  does not determine how one will interpret a TV
  show, but it may influence it.
• Meanings are class-stratified, but not in
  isomorphic or highly predictable ways.
• Just as meanings are class-stratified, they are
  race and gender-stratified also.
• Social class, age, race, sex, and other social
  statuses play a key role in providing us with the
  cultural tools we use to decode media messages.
• Within subcultures that have been marginalized by
  the dominant society, oppositional
  interpretations are more likely to emerge.

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Social location matters

• Similarly, rich people are more likely to embrace
  the preferred readings of media text.
• These readings reinforce the dominant ideologies
  that sustain the status quo.
• Conclusion ones social locations (as men or
  women, white or black, rich or poor, etc.)
  provides the frame of reference through which we
  see the world.

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Gender, Class, and TV

• Andrea Presss (1991) study of Women Watching
  Television focused on the relationship between
  social structure and interpretation.
• Press interviewed middle and working class women,
  their attitudes toward gender issues, and their
  TV viewing habits.
• Among her conclusions the women in her study
  carried class-related preconceptions of what
  realistic programming should look like. TV
  depictions of independent women did not look
  realistic to working class women, but they did to
  middle class women.

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International Readings of American Television

• As of 1995, Baywatch was the most popular TV
  program in the history of international TV. It
  was watched by viewers in 144 countries.
• A mass society theorist would argue that Baywatch
  indoctrinates international viewers into Western
  ideologies of beauty, consumerism, youth, etc.
• However, the ways the show was interpreted by
  international audiences was more complex.
  Different ethnic groups interpreted the show
  according to their own values and ethnic
  identities.
• People may watch the same show, but they do not
  see the same thing.

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Janice Radways study of women reading romance
novels

• Janice Radway (1984) studied the ways in which
  white, middle class women interpreted romance
  novels. She found lots of polysemy.
• The preferred reading of a romance novel is in
  support of of patriarchy A tall dark and
  handsome man sweeps the passive and dependent
  women off her feet and gives her bliss.
• Radway found the womens readings to be more
  complex, however. She found that some women
  enjoyed the process itself reading the novel
  was a time out for a woman to enjoy herself for
  a change. Furthermore, some women read the plot
  as fantasy escapism, not as realistic. This
  alternative interpretation does not support
  patriarchy.

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Watching TV with the Family

• Gender is one of the key influences in family TV
  viewing patterns.
• In our patriarchal society, men tend to control
  the TV remotes and the selection process, making
  TV-watching a potential site for domestic power
  struggles.
• Men and women watch TV differently. Men tend to
  attend to TV singularly, while women tend to
  watch TV while doing other chores and activities,
  like talking and caring for children.
• When viewing TV together, those members with the
  most power (father or mother) have the most
  influence in how a TV show is interpreted.

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Oppositional Interpretations

• Some audiences resist or oppose the preferred
  reading of a text.
• John Fiske views audiences from subordinate
  social locations as semiological guerillas who
  seek alternative interpretations in order to gain
  control of their lives.
• Resistance occurs when people reject the
  preferred reading for an alternative one.
• A feminist like Jean Kilbourne will decode a
  media text such as a mainstream magazine ad by
  using an alternative set of perceptual filters.
  Such resistances may be individual or social
  (within the context of the feminist
  counterculture).

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Resistance and Identity

• John Fiske discusses the ways in which many
  teenage girls engage in oppositional decoding of
  the pop star Madonna.
• The preferred reading of Madonna was that she was
  a sex pot offering her sexuality in a typical
  manner for the benefit of males. She was eye
  candy and thus upheld patriarchal sexuality.
• However, many teenage girls developed an
  alternative reading of Madonna. Here, she was a
  women who took control of her own sexuality and
  thus liberated women from patriarchy.
• Of course, Madonna exploited both of these
  readings, and this gained her a huge audience and
  made her difficult to interpret.

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The Pleasures of Media

• Pleasure may be mass-mediated. When this is the
  case for a person, they tend to feel little need
  to challenge the status quo because they are
  getting pleasure from the status quo.
• Mass mediated pleasure pleasure that sustains
  and supports the status quo is called hegemonic
  pleasure by John Fiske.
• In cases where the dominant culture
  overly-restricts pleasure, people may seek out
  alternative forms of pleasure.
• Fiske calls alternative pleasures popular
  pleasures of either resistance or evasion (of
  the status quo). Popular pleasures are often
  attacked or outlawed by agents of the status quo.

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Pleasure and Fantasy

• What explains why a woman might get pleasure from
  a TV show that depicts women as subservient to
  men?
• One pleasure she might get is hegemonic pleasure.
  This pleasure is achieved if she believes in the
  patriarchal order that is reinforced by the TV
  show.
• Another possible pleasure she might get involves
  fantasy. If the TV show is read as fantasy, then
  she is likely to suspend its real-world
  ideological implications.
• In fantasy, we are permitted to imagine that we
  are different and therefore we suspend real-world
  judgments. Fantasy is intrinsically fun because
  it liberates us from traditional real world
  structures.

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What explains why a woman might get pleasure from
a TV show that depicts women as subservient to
men?

• John Fiske adds more insight to this issue by
  arguing that she may interpret a popular pleasure
  from even the most sexist TV show.
• Due to polysemy, she may read the show as a goof
  rather than take it seriously, or she may read a
  new and liberating interpretation into the show.
• For example, it is possible for a feminist to
  enjoy sexist pornography because she/he may enjoy
  the fantasy aspect of it or they may read an
  alternative popular pleasure into it.
• Similarly, it is possible for a liberal to enjoy
  the Rush Limbaugh radio show for its fantasy
  aspects or perhaps to read it as a goof.

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Media Celebrities why do we pay so much
attention?

• Scholars originally tended to dismiss the
  celebrity world as trivia and pure escapism. But
  celebrity watching is a complex act and audiences
  use a range of interpretive strategies to read
  messages into celebrity news.
• Some audiences (Polyannas) essentially believe
  what they read about celebrities. Others (Horaldo
  Riveras) enjoy the challenge of seeing behind the
  curtain to expose and unmask them for the
  truth.
• Still others are game players who neither embrace
  the preferred reading nor see it as an
  opportunity to get at the real truth. This latter
  group avoids celebrity worship, yet they enjoy
  the fantasy. They are along for the ride. The fun
  lies in playing the game, but not treating it
  seriously.

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Hegemonic and Popular Pleasures

• To Fiske, the preferred reading of a celebrity
  involves hero-worship, which is a hegemonic
  pleasure in our corporate capitalist culture.
• Yet many prefer to read the tabloids for popular
  pleasures rather than hegemonic pleasures.
• They like to glean alternative interpretations -
  ones that levelize the rich and famous, making
  them seem truly trivial and undeserving of any
  kind of worship.
• Similarly, professional wrestling explores
  hegemonic pleasures while offering audiences
  plenty of openness for alternative readings that
  provide popular pleasures too.

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Conclusion

• The pleasure of media use is often because we
  engage in a variety of interpretive strategies.
  Multiple meanings may be interpreted from the
  same text.
• Our brains seem to love polysemy. The very act of
  interpretation is inherently pleasureful, as all
  comedians understand.
• John Fiske argues that the act of interpretive
  resistance itself produces popular pleasure.
  Resistance is fun because it empowers those who
  do not wield much power in their everyday lives.
• There is pleasure to be had in both conforming to
  the preferred readings as well as in adopting an
  alternative reading of the same text.

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End